The Military-Industrial's complex on the Long War
Monday, January 15, 2007 at 12:15PM BOOK REVIEW: That damned, elusive Prussian, By Sam Leith
Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa, By Edward Paice, Orion, 488pp, £25, ISBN 9780297847090
In the Long War, the military is not only forced to return to society (the peace), but to nature (the off-grid Gap, which is very equatorial).
The military is loathe to move in this direction, because the fight requires small numbers of extremely well-trained professionals (if done effectively preemptively--as in winning Phase 0 vice waiting until Phase 3 to whip out the big guns), while the post-fight requires huge numbers of extremely well-trained individuals. Force structure-intensive, it is not.
That is why the mil-industrial complex is of two minds on the Long War, reminding me of the famous movie review that read "Loved Ben, Hated Hur": they "loved Leviathan, hated SysAdmin" during the Cold War, and now they fear the force structure implications of transformed war (the overmatch) but are excited by the infrastructural contracts and system integration work of the new peace (the great New-Core-followed-by-the-Gap build-out to come).
I'm not making that last part up: it's why I get all those speaking gigs with big corps.
Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.
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